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[rickitikitarr]

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[rickitikitarr]

Fallen back in in six months in desperation.

[Head shaking, bemused.]

[formerself]

[Eggsy smirks and shakes his head, then takes another sip of tea.]

You really didn't know?

[rickitikitarr]

I've done this since I was eighteen. I'm turning forty in a few months.

[Reminding him, with a little shrug.]

Most countries in the world, people will want to kill me. I'll never be able to hold another job that asks for papers, and I don't want to transplant Danny too far from what she knows.

If I can score it, I think I'm going to try to get into one of the small passenger planes and do contract distribution work for the heroin smugglers.

[formerself]

[Which strikes him overwhelmingly as 'getting set up to get killed again, at a later date, while acting as a net contributor to the sum total of human misery'.]

...You don't think the Admiral might not be able to smooth over the rough edges for you, if you ask nice? Papers-wise, I mean. Fuck, I'm pretty sure plenty of people 'round here could give you a hand if what you need is to be with your little girl.

[The deal Ricki's talked about post-graduation involves someone who's dead. If he's getting caught up on the relatively minor issues of professional reputation and paperwork, Eggsy will call bullshit so loudly it'll bounce off the other end of the ship.]

[rickitikitarr]

[It plainly hasn't occurred to him that people would help. He gives him a sort of frozen, astonished look over his teacup.]

It'd be a start. I mean, now that I'm dead, the people trying to kill me likely aren't any longer.

[It has been something he's worried about often.]

[formerself]

Yeah, you ain't wrong. [He frowns thoughtfully.] That kind of stuff - I mean, there's got to be so many people wouldn't be able to go home an' get on, if they didn't get things sorted out for 'em.

[rickitikitarr]

Yes, but when has this place ever been fair or kind?

[He asks, with a shrug.]

I'd expected to be dead again inside the year, to be honest, except Peter tells me it's been a few since I died. Which probably means that 'paused time' fable isn't going to kick in for me.

[formerself]

Yeah, that's -

[His brow furrows.]

Well, I dunno. You go back, different name, keep your nose clean - how's he supposed to know different?

[He accepts that Guillam et al are very good, but nobody's infallible. If Ricki really wants out of it, then being 'dead' in the eyes of the Circus cannot be a bad myth to perpetuate.]

[rickitikitarr]

[He glances over at Eggsy, and sips his tea.]

I don't know, darling. This might just be one of those things that you don't have a sense of because you haven't lived it. You don't- this moment in time, in this part of the world, with my face- and I don't mean being Ricki Tarr, I mean being white- I'll be checked on by at least our people and the Chinese, and probably the Americans.

Then there's what I did to Bill Haydon. This is a colony and a stretch of very active territory. If I can lose ten pounds, and turn to pure muscle, get Max's haircut and grow Solomons' beard, and work up a new voice, with authentic paperwork I might be safe, but I can't help but wonder how he'd pull that off, me being registered as always having been there.

And then, I'm keeping my nose clean how? I mean- I could go back to construction, or work in the rubber tree plantations, if those haven't all been burned, but the first would raise some serious questions and the second would probably get me tortured to death in the next wave of insurgency. I could...

Actually, yeah. My best bet might be pretending to be a missionary.

[formerself]

[That's daunting. Eggsy rubs a hand over his mouth, frustrated on Ricki's behalf, annoyed at himself for how simplistic and limited his worldview is. This isn't fair - just the idea of getting this far and then being fucked by circumstance the second he gets back home.]

Missionary? Yeah, why not. It's that or get Iris to drop you an' Danny an' her mum somewhere else altogether, innit.

[This is a joke, not a suggestion.]

[rickitikitarr]

If only.

[He says, mouth curving in a smile.]

Missionary. Or some kind of silly volunteer or other. I could go teach English in one of the church schools, actually.

[formerself]

Yeah? That'd work. Reckon you'd be a decent teacher.

[rickitikitarr]

[Ricki finds himself grinning.]

Think they'll know I skipped more classes than I attended?

[formerself]

[Eggsy grins back, a little sly.]

Pfft. That was like thirty years ago. Reckon you'll have caught up by now.

[rickitikitarr]

Hah- it actually was.

[Is the sad thing.]

Think it'd matter if the place faked me up a resume with something worthwhile on it?

[formerself]

Nah. Everyone talks bollocks on their CV, don't they?

[Says a man who's never written a CV in his life.]

[rickitikitarr]

Well, fundamentally. And if I fuck up the first batch, there's a new set next year, right?

[formerself]

[Eggsy grins.]

Yeah. Just - try an' get the little ones, then they've got a couple of years to get fixed.

...I wanted to be a teacher, when I was little.

[He sounds almost surprised by that, as if it's something he'd forgotten all about and is just springing back to mind now.]

I mean, there was loads of stuff, but - that too.

[rickitikitarr]

[Ricki thinks about that, smiles, and reaches out to kick Eggsy's chair affectionately with the edge of his foot. He would have loved to teach him, to go get Dean arrested, to- a hundred little things.]

Retirement option for spies, hey.

[formerself]

[Eggsy smirks and gives him a gentle chairkick back.]

I'm hopin' you're the only one I'm gonna have to worry about for a bit.

[But if he manages to get Harry back, like fuck he's letting him go back to work.]

[rickitikitarr]

Maybe I'll ask Peter.

[Another good source of wisdom on the topic.]

Lotus-munching. You fellows call it that?

[formerself]

I ain't heard 'em called anything, yet.

[But he knows the term, and he can't remember if Ricki told him or if he just absorbed it from somewhere.]

I dunno, though. You've been at it twenty years - I din't even make it the whole way through training, officially.

[rickitikitarr]

Retiring to become a lotus muncher.

[He says, contentedly.]

Well. I do like the sound of it.

[formerself]

Me too. An' I think you'll last a bit longer munchin' lotus than you will smuggling heroin.

[His tone is pretty clearly indicative of Jesus Christ Ricki do not do this.]

[rickitikitarr]

Hmm?

[He glances up, then laughs, and presses his fingers over his mouth, selfconsciously.]

That didn't even occur to me. I suppose it is a little- inmatey, isn't it?